Your pies look great and I cannot wait to try your technique with the extra grate w/aluminum foil. I have only had my KPG for a few weeks and was looking for people who were having the same problem as me. Not only have I found that info here, but you have a solution that sounds great. I was looking at a way to lower the top and this will be my next try. Thank you for doing the work already!

It looks to me in the video you don't have the ceiling modification done yet on the collar. Since your pies turned out great prior to modifying - why did you feel the need to lower the ceiling closer to the pie??... the pizza in the vids look great prior to the change...can you explain further? thanks

Elijah, I'm glad you were able to make this product work for you, but that doesn't change the fact that, out of the box, this product makes horrible pizzas, and, more importantly, this insert can be mimicked with a $10 piece of sheet metal and a $30 stone.

So... until these folks start selling this device for $40, and include instructions on how to mod it, then it will not be the answer to anyone's prayers.

Two things: First if it cost $40 to make why would anyone go into business and sell it for the same price? Secondly, There is no substitiute for a tru WFO but I achieved great results right out of the box and following the manufactures directions of charcoal, wood combo.

Conclusion - I never prayed for a WFO cheap alternative but I'm pretty stoked about making better than average pizzas for a little over $100.

scott123

Two things: First if it cost $40 to make why would anyone go into business and sell it for the same price?

Because a lot of people don't have the necessary DIY skills to work with steel flashing and tinsnips.

I will concede that my $40 proposal doesn't match the aesthetics of this device. This is going to be a lot prettier than flashing. But $40 will mimick the results, which is where I think it really matters.

>> Btw, with this type of setup, you could be reaching temperatures that will melt the foil.

I have read that melting point of aluminum is about 1220 degrees F.

1,221F, but who's counting?

Just remember that with foil, there is so little mass that virtually no time is required for it to increase dramatically in temperature. Even near instantaneous exposure to temperatures over the melting point can melt it.

What a great post! I have been trying to decide between the Kettle Pizza and the 2stones.It looks like the 2stones might work better out of the box but with very very minor mods the Kettle Pizza seems to be making a lot of people happy. To tell the truth ... I just like the look of the Kettle Pizza grill ! The setup makes the Weber plus kettle grill look like a real .. albeit mini ... wood fired oven. Yeah ... I'm sure one could build it cheaper but I know I could never do it and make it look as hot is this setup! So thanks for the write up. I plan to give it a try and hope someday I can report back as well.

The OP used aluminum foil to lower the dome height on this product. What if one was to lower the dome height by molding one out of refractory cement and perlite similar to the FrankenWeber? Does anyone here think it would work, or be safer?

You could it just becomes heavier. I've used foil to good effect but am having a stainless steel plate made that would double as a grill plate when I need to do that sort of cooking, to sit on the top as a more permanent solution. A local steel company can do the laster cutting for me and it is a reasonable price.

Today's lunch cooked on the Kettle pizza with foil layer on second deck: Proscuitto & Buffalo Mozzarella. No particular science to the dough, I just use high gluten bread flour, add some yeast, let it rise, knock it back, make some dough balls and let them rise a bit again before making the pizzas.

I removed the hinged portions of the grille and I can slip in wood and push it to the back to re-fuel. The trick to the kettle pizza is to control the wood flame, you can get it too hot, and you can easily burn the pizzas. With a foiled or fully covered top deck, I can cook a 90 sec pizza, and again if you are not careful with the fire, you can burn it in 2 1/2 mins. The Kettle pizza gets up to temp for me in about 20 mins, and I only ever make a max of four to six pies when we have guests, normally 2 or 3 when it is just our family. It does not need insulation, it is designed to get up to the temp, and cook a pizza quickly - so what I do now is to get to close 400 deg C and then I spike the temp with kindling to raise it to about 450 or thereabouts. Slip the pizza in , and with one turn its done. The WF is what makes this contraption work. Frankly I have cooked without wood splits and have used just kindling, it works - the Kettlepizza is not a WF hearth with a long burning fire, it is a WF cooker, - it heats up quicker than a regular WFO and offers you that short window of heat conditions to cook like a WFO when you have it up to desired temp.

I want to thank everybody that that contributed to this thread. I am just in the process of setting up a Kettle Pizza and should be baking my first pie tomorrow. This along with J.Kenji from Serious Eats has saved me a lot of frustration.Kevin

You could it just becomes heavier. I've used foil to good effect but am having a stainless steel plate made that would double as a grill plate when I need to do that sort of cooking, to sit on the top as a more permanent solution. A local steel company can do the laster cutting for me and it is a reasonable price.

Today's lunch cooked on the Kettle pizza with foil layer on second deck: Proscuitto & Buffalo Mozzarella. No particular science to the dough, I just use high gluten bread flour, add some yeast, let it rise, knock it back, make some dough balls and let them rise a bit again before making the pizzas.

I removed the hinged portions of the grille and I can slip in wood and push it to the back to re-fuel. The trick to the kettle pizza is to control the wood flame, you can get it too hot, and you can easily burn the pizzas. With a foiled or fully covered top deck, I can cook a 90 sec pizza, and again if you are not careful with the fire, you can burn it in 2 1/2 mins. The Kettle pizza gets up to temp for me in about 20 mins, and I only ever make a max of four to six pies when we have guests, normally 2 or 3 when it is just our family. It does not need insulation, it is designed to get up to the temp, and cook a pizza quickly - so what I do now is to get to close 400 deg C and then I spike the temp with kindling to raise it to about 450 or thereabouts. Slip the pizza in , and with one turn its done. The WF is what makes this contraption work. Frankly I have cooked without wood splits and have used just kindling, it works - the Kettlepizza is not a WF hearth with a long burning fire, it is a WF cooker, - it heats up quicker than a regular WFO and offers you that short window of heat conditions to cook like a WFO when you have it up to desired temp.

I normally use one half moon of coal, or one chimney stack filled to about 4/5s. I have never cooked with coal alone - don't think it works. The coal only provides the bed for the wood to fire up and it is the Wood fire that gets it to temps of 450 deg C. It is probably better to use 1 full chimney stack, and 1 and a half coal baskets, so that one basket burns the wood, and the half offers more general heat under the stone to get get the desired leoparding... My family don't like the bottom leoparding that much so I don't aim for that... my wife does not like it and my son does not like it....so you gotta feed your family what they want to eat..... you can get it and I have managed to many times, and the way to do it is to spread the coal about a bit more. I think you will find the kettlepizza site now recommends that. FYI, I have a circular steel plate on the top deck, you can find a pic of it somewhere on one ofthese kettlepizza threads.

It takes about 10 -15 mins to get the coal hot, and the wood takes maybe another 10 mins to get burning. I use a combination of kindling and wood splits chopped up, they burn faster to cooking temp and you can re-fuel faster.

We move again in a few months and hopefully we will be back in our old house and I can get back to a proper WFO, but this works fine and is a lot of fun.

I designed a charcoal base for my MPO that I tested today charcoal briquettes, it has capacity for 1 chimney basket, it got my MPO at a bit over 600 deg f for both top and bottom stone for over one hour. There is not enough to put big log of wood, but you can put couple of small wood pieces for flames and wood smoke taste. Planning to do a bake test tommorow using lump charcoal. Hoping to get higher temp.